I had never been to the Borgata Event Center (though I do enjoy the Borgata Casino as my favorite casino in AC), so I was pretty excited to see what their area for concerts (definitely not “shows”) was like. It was interesting–carpet, stadium seating, a gigantic stage, and a huge standing area. The biggest acts in music today routinely sell this venue out.. looking at the upcoming acts you’ll see legends: Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, Chicago, Earth Wind And Fire, Morrissey, and plenty other big name acts. I estimate the venue held about 5,000 last night for the sold out show.. much larger than the venues that held only hundreds in times past when I’ve seen this band.

Colour Revolt opened, and they played well enough. Anathallo followed, and they put on a unique show, filled with many instruments you wouldn’t normally find at a “rock concert”. Their vocals could definitely have used a volume boost, it was often hard to hear them. They were a nice change of pace to the typical “scene bands” you usually find as openers, though.

The crowd the entire night was absolutely terrible, a trend that I’m finding is all too common now that bands like Brand New are breaking into the mainstream–or that “emo” is becoming incredibly popular. Primarily little kids who only wanted to hear “Seventy Times 7” or “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad”, meat-heads only there to hold their girlfriends, and other walks of life not found at these shows only a few years ago, the crowd was rude, talkative during the quiet songs, and plain ignorant to most of the bands’ material–even Brand New.

Eighteen songs, with thirteen of them consisting of “new material”. The crowd didn’t know anything aside from the one track from Your Favorite Weapon and the four from Deja Entendu, continually yelling for the band’s older material during quiet new songs such as “Limousine” or “Handcuffs”.

The demos/b-sides from The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me were a nice surprise, since I’ve heard nearly every other Brand New song at least a five times live. “Untitled Demo 05” is begging to be recorded and released, and “Untitled Demo 01” would be a perfect opening to some sort of b-sides EP. “Coca-Cola” was a great way to open the show, despite the crowd not knowing the song at all.

Jesse was much more into this show than he was at Bamboozle (see my review of that for details); the band sounded much tighter as well. It’s a mixed bag about their song-selection: it would be nice to hear more of my favorite Brand New songs from Deja Entendu, but it is nice hearing so much new material.

Aside from the unexpected demos, highlights of the set included the extended jam in the middle of “Okay I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don’t”, the “loves you so much” buildup in “Limousine”, Erica from Anathallo singing on “Play Crack The Sky”, and the entire encore that pretty much began with the end of “Welcome To Bangkok”. “Degausser” remains one of my favorite Brand New songs (still, I only need to hear it ONCE per show), and the band played it flawlessly. Vin was wearing 3-D glasses during the performance, and someone was using a voice box set to “robot” to do the backup vocals (such as “When I arrive will God be waiting and pacing around his throne; will he feel a little Old Testament?”). It was a great touch.

It was very nice to see Brand New playing a solid show, after their horrendous Bamboozle outing. The crowd was terrible, but it didn’t stop Long Island’s finest from putting on a great show. I anticipate the band’s upcoming tour with Thrice and meWithoutYou.